Category: Small boats

The next BBA student launch day is on the 7th December – and you’re all invited!

Boat Building Academy student launch December 2011 invitation

Intheboatshed.net readers (and everyone else, to be honest!) are warmly invited to the Boat Building Academy’s class of March 2011 student launch at 2pm on the 7th December.

The boats include:

  • 13ft cold-moulded motor launch designed by Andrew Wolstenholme
  • 17ft clinker-built pilchard larker
  • 10ft foam-sandwich composite dinghy
  • 19ft epoxy-ply Caledonian Yawl (designed by Iain Oughtred)
  • 15ft West Greenland kayak
  • 14ft strip planked ‘Cassy’ canoe yawl (designed by George Holmes)
  • 14ft 1in strip-planked catboat
  • 14ft stitch and glue-built speedboat (designed by BBA instructor Mike Broome)
For building photos of these boats, click here.

See more photos from last year’s December launch:

Fishing boats of Goa, photographed by Ranjan Mitra

Fishing boats of Goa Fishing boats of Goa

Fishing boats of Goa Fishing boats of Goa Fishing boats of Goa

Fishing boats of Goa Fishing boats of Goa Fishing boats of Goa

Fishing boats of Goa Fishing boats of Goa Fishing boats of Goa

Fishing boats of Goa Fishing boats of Goa Fishing boats of Goa

Ranjan Mitra took these photos of fishing boats on the coast of Goa, a small and relatively affluent Indian state with an Arabian Sea coastline.

Ranjan is a colleague of my brother Matt Atkin and seems to have been inspired by Matt’s habit on business trips of slipping down to the nearest beach or harbour to take shots for intheboatshed.net.  Thanks Ranjan! (Matt’s photos can be found by following this link.)

The motorised fishing boats take the classic form of a high bow for dealing with rough water and low sides aft to allow the fishermen access to work with nets and gear, while the outrigger dugouts seem to be a fascinating link to prehistoric times.

Goa bears many signs of its domination by Portugal from the 16th century, including a city named after the Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama.  The state was annexed by India in 1961.

There are a couple of interesting articles online including this paper, which describes the local craft, and another describing a visitor’s experiences in the mid-1990s, including ancient types such as dugouts and sewn plank boats caulked with tar.

Shackleton polar expedition photos by Frank Hursley

Frank Hurley photos from Shackleton expedition Frank Hurley photos from Shackleton expedition

Sir Ernest Shackleton’s 1914-17 expedition was an attempt to cross Antarctica from one side to the other via the South Pole, but in January 1915 the expedition ship, the Endurance, became locked in the ice of the Weddell Sea, which slowly crushed and finally sank the vessel over the following months, while Shackleton and his men camped on the ice.

The photos above by expedition photographer Frank Hursley are from this period – a much bigger selection can be seen at howtobearetronaut.com.

Eventually they were able to travel with their boats to Elephant Island, from which a small group led by Shackleton sailed one of the Endurance’s ship’s boats, the Sir James Caird, over a distance of 800 miles to the the inhabited island of South Georgia to get help.

For more posts about Shackleton’s Endurance expedition and about the celebrated Sir James Caird voyage to South Georgia click here; for photos of South Georgia itself, click here.